by sacrificing people and sucking blood out of their hearts -- they're still beating hearts. in medieval times, christian penitence by wearing [inaudible] shirts and hating themselves. today they do it by imposing taxes on flights and forcing everyone to use crappy, flickering lightbulbs they give you a headache. >> you can watch this online at booktv.com. >> today on a w. mack, the losst

discussions is book with chris hedges. >> i wanted to ask you first probably about the vision about religion. which is a kind of utopian sort of look -- a re- formation of secular society. it probably you could lay out some of the ideas in the book. >> secular society has not worked everything out. in other words, once we reject religion, if we reject religion -- we still have some gaps. ..

the notion of an institution, which of course a few other things besides. >> and you have some very specific or pose those, you

know, examples from religious life issue essentially would like secularize and incorporated into the wider society. perhaps you can expound upon those. >> it strikes a religions are in the way joint educational machines. in the secular world can we take education very seriously. and a lot of money is devoted to institutes of higher education. when people try to understand why we educate, funny and serious skills, for jobs, for the economy to compete and be competitive. but there is another more noble founding ambition, which creeps enter in the more lyrical passages of politicians speeches or graduation ceremonies and that is the idea that education should be a source of pride and that should help you to live and beaten education appears to work

on predefined meaning, consolation, ethical structure. in other words, that is a religious ambition. in may but a tree sit in a state that turns in the 19th century. church attendance began to collapse in many parts of western europe. people ask themselves the question, how are we going to replace many of these could interest or religion, ethics, structure, and meeting, and instructional group of people came up with what i think word means an intriguing idea culture will replace groups are, the dialogues of plato, the novels of jane oscar in the stacks, and these works that are possibilities replacing a lot of the direction and at dixons structure of organized religions. i think it's an intriguing idea that is totally disappeared. say you went to harvard or

cambridge university rockford user to reset here is i want to learn how to live in die. i want to know what is good and bad and i want a meeting and cope with my own mortality. the guys who beat atlanta number for the same asylum. it is simply not an addition we are led to bring to bear upon secular education. i think the reason for that is there is an idea that basically people are -- want to read until you're kind of together. you don't need particular help. the business of life is simple. you need to get married and have a family and find a job you love and watch her parents die and confront your own mortality and put yourself in a coffin. basically all of that is easy. you kind of know how to do it if you're an adult. the only people who need help are people debris self-help books. that's the dominant secular elite ideology. so the idea of relevant and assistance and adapt the system

is absent. we talk about religion is a different point of view. the rest of us are up holding it together and we need assistance. we need wisdom. i don't necessarily agree with the wisdom that is on offer. but i'm fascinated by the analysis of her fragility. i think it is fascinating and truer than the secular model. that leads me to think that if i was -- the emperor of all space and time i would want to be jake how business trends headed down the generations. i would argue that the humanity should go back to that 19th century vision, the neo-religious vision of culture, scripture remains a good idea sadly neglected. >> host: more than neglect it, probably assaulted. if you look within the united states, we now have 100,000

college graduates here nietzsche and in the humanities. all these institutions began to train ministers. they made that transition, the one you referred to expanded by arnold, but in major universities, lots of the departments are being shut, university of albany shut down there for a language departments in some ways didn't that experiment failed? >> guest: often people say the world is crass and materialistic and the faults fall seduces government or horrible or students. i have to say that there's that the fault lies inhumanities themselves. that they have failed to properly make a case for their vision of scholarship has unfortunately been hijacked by a

sort of neo-scientific idea, the researchers what matters and one can research poetry, like one can research the scientific problem and this is the generations of students off the humanities have committed suicide by b. so cut off when you think about it there is enormous and eight entries of how to live. it is everywhere. the sad that they've reached a stage but they're so cut off from the spontaneous curiosity of people that they urged having to shut down the field to analyze the needs of their audiences into the lies that the material they're sitting on, the culture they sit on is a resource to live by and if they handle it like that, they went opening rather than closing.

>> host: i don't know if you've read any of his stuff on the canon of course sea salt the academic hierarchy itself. just go to find it on themselves people being sacrificed in the name of this corrupt ideology. we all know it. you know it. there's appetite out there for knowledge, wisdom, structured argument, et cetera. it was that goes on outside the university. the university which has been a monastery. should've been the place outside the press of capitalism with the best arguments could be made and rehearsed and wisdom transfer. the train written into the architecture of america's colleges for the most part good that has been betrayed and they paid a financial price. while i'm sorry i can only think the right it upon themselves. postcode bloom would argue that for those who have truly grasp

as you point out the importance of art and literature, there is no place anymore than any university. i think he was sort of agree with you. castro the problem is we are disorganized and weaken one thing religion teaches us if you want to get some kind of power in the world you need to organize. so the problem is the would-be academic in in their bedroom writing the book is much weaker. if you look at how powerful religions are coming is because of their capacity to organize missiles properly in the secular world will organize itself around the university. it's still to do that. and so you propose to create institutions. >> guest: a method of recruiting departments -- it seems striking to me that the departments in higher education all reflect academic spin rather

than questions of the soul. so you have a literature department which is a completely nonsensical category. really what a literature department is a department of human relationships. so let's hope the department of human relationship, the department of lebanon time, not anthropology. so the fact that the academic department comes first as part of the sickness at the university of that in the cart before the horse. >> host: i grew up in the church and i was telling you before although you're an atheist are kinder to the institution than i would be, you're the kind of healthy respect for institutions. there is certainly a strain within christian thought that argues that with constantine the third century, the rise of the christian church did as much to and distort and defined the radical as perpetuated.

>> guest: i think we have to be careful because certainly the temper of the modern world, if the institution is corrupt, the true religion resides in the individual heart and any agglomeration of people is corrupt. while that is no doubt true of certain point, it is also true we have to understand what is good about institutions, which is that they are able to incorporate money, power, intelligence and consent to have a reach that the individual will never have. i am aware the secular world there's people trying to change the world by writing books. reading the book is the dominant method. we found atheist writing books to attack religion will. they want to bring religion down. the problem about writing up his picture using one instrument to deal with some thing which is utterly unsuited to being attacked by the instrument.

a book into very much because what you're dealing with what the religion is an institution, which is the work of course central to religions, but religions are also community centers, educational machine, travel agents use, and recent calls. they're involved in so many different entities and to think that a book and sharply and stochastically blow this whole thing up is to misunderstand what you are dealing with. and as i say, i think we are not short of good ideas and a secular humanist world. the problem is that it is generally have traction and they don't have traction because they are not parts of organize systems. for example with lots of professors people writing wonderful books on how to live an ethical life, lots of stuff. yet go outside in the streets of new york. is it happening? no. there is not that thing that is the union of theory and a spirit

that is what is fascinating to me about religion. they are unified so they have the pressure better system, and to let in a corner, but there's also a group of people producing what cards that can be read by anyone or producing the billboard in the modern world or building cathedrals ended despite the germans call it quits down, a total work of art. within the work of art it has the elements of totality basically saying to people when magistrate to access or your brain, to your intellect. we have to touch are the greatest moments day you're a variety of media and the secular route doesn't seem to recognize that. we've got advertising and the luxury industries and the construction industry and it was at the intellectuals in another. religion is a union of those. it's construction and passion in

you sick and intellect all of one embedded, pushing one thing. and i think this is often missed. a >> host: to what extent does the consumer society and you talk in the book about public relations and selling. i think you talk about them catering to people's needs. what they're actually doing is catering to the emotional deficiency. >> host: to lead the good life you have to distinguish those appetites for new, which are legitimate needs to those which are a pain and fly dns mess in link to your fugitive desires and part of the good life is knowing how to separate them. we have lost the scent that we need help in doing that. i mean the consumer societies based on the idea that the individual can make up their own choice. the individual is robust. they can make the difference between needs and desires.

so before 7:00 you maybe can show and not fair. basically adults will be able to judge their true needs and you can have a massive poster said go to thailand on holiday and be happy and it won't have an effect at all. that is a beacon of these posters. the advertising industry is that it does have an effect and that is the advertising is a big one. the next logical step is to ask, what are we doing allowing systems to take place, which perfused his needs and desires and therefore prevents us from possibly accessing our best possibilities and ruined their lives. and religion is rather an interesting model because really what it says is he to meet advertising all around, but she did the right kind of advertising. you need reminders of how to surf while because they're are permanently being pulled in different directions and that is how a lot of organized religions function. they have billboards that are of

a a cathedral or temple or could actually be a billboard. it is an attempt to say you need some support. the hold of religious art is really an attempt to support a set of ideas. it is the kind of propaganda, and massive tool. >> guest: is not can also make to to indicate space? >> guest: janice. to create an area where you'll take time out from your normal life in which the values that are most close to your heart and the truth can get a full chance to express themselves. this is a sacred space. the cathedral, church, temple, mosque. he was tossed from the hub of the city and you're back with your true self. again, my first question is to say what are we doing with that now?

if this is a serious need for thousands of years, where's it gone? people would say, well, museum to which in my book i argue quite aside about five museums are not quite doing their job properly. so there's many ways in which religion are quite aware of in terms of art need to have gone unattended in the secular world. >> guest: they are certainly religious scholars would argue and of course religious systems are created by humankind and oftentimes serve the entries not so much a religious tenet, but for those who run them as history in the catholic church as a producer did one. what about this sort of critics who would say, well, religion itself for institutional religion to quote the theologian

inherently demonic including the church and oftentimes religious institutions serve as much as an adamant towards the capacity for transcendence or transformation, that the religious impulse that those journeys to describe articulates an audit audit the nonrational forces in life, beauty, grief, struggle for mortality all the things you've written about, that one has to make a sharp distinction between the institution and the religious impulse and in many cases may cover the war in yugoslavia, the religious institutions signed on for the crusades of ethnic cleansing knowing that they gave a kind of sacred authority to murder.

>> guest: and anyway to underplay we have to accept the institutions can make things possible but are not possible vicious the individual. those take the heat out of the argument. many of the same things happening. take the arts and humanities we've been discussing. you know, the university has a system has the same relationship between the spontaneous inner part of the system. so take the impulse to read poetry. you can read poetry on your own and have some wonderful private feelings and then you can go to an institution. he is a terrible time. they will corrupt your understanding of poetry and get involved in departmental struggles and misappropriated funds, abuse students. there'll be scandals in the institution will be horribly corrupt. so you have the same dichotomy. the purity of the individual

response from the in corruption of the institution if this is not just a religious institute. this is a humanistic. that how we look at that? my answer is neither one is the perfect answer. you need both and both could go about. you could add to personal responsibility of this is not properly guided in house attraction because it's squeezed out by the pressures of life. so you don't read the poetry. he religious impulses squash because you're watching television or whatever. let's not romanticize the spontaneous person on the hello who feels alone. and at the same time while respecting the terribleness of all institutions, all businesses, churches, et cetera. they are nevertheless able at their best on this strip everything slide to the

cathedral, commission b. minor or terminal five at the airbusa 380s. in other words, when humans come together to do the names, the result can be very impressive, but of course it can also be distraught. i think we should stop being obsessed with religion as an anomaly in the corruption that afflicts the. it is no more or less prey to corruption as an institution than any other human institution if you look at the history of general motors compared to the catholic church, over the few decades, even in those decades you'll find just as much corruption, and use, terrible stuff in the history of general motors as he will end up representative chunk of the catholic church and spread the history of 100 years and a really bad. but it's been going for hundreds of years.

so let's be aware of romanticizing the individual and demonizing the institution. both have their problems. >> host: although general motors you can see it's certainly an race is the of capitalism. and you're right. do the right before the reformation the catholic church was a totalitarian entity come which will does much to fear and the threat of damnation as anything else that there was the kind of power, especially in preliterate europe, which the church certainly fused. >> guest: search me to the power and verbal government at that time, this was an age when your children could could or wives to exist as legal entities come with a whole nation of being a subject was not part of the common law. so we are dealing with violence

across the board. jacinta church in 1400 was the bastian of intolerance. i am an atheist. i don't see why i'm defending the catholic church. but all i'm saying is i'm also an historian has said in this context. the average monastery was not better or worse than the average kingship. so these were violet days. >> host: let me give you quotes spinoza and pretty cheap. at one point in the book you talk about how difficult camacho strew how radical intellectuals, those figures like spinosa and a nietzsche challenged the assumptions of an age, both essentially cast out, not only by the institution. spinoza was tried. i wonder if those figures can

never be comfortable in any institution. you seem to propose that it's possible. >> guest: he longed for company. he looked back to ancient greece and rome and the fellowship of philosophers at that time. he wanted to be part of a team that he was living in 19th century europe in the the german university system, which was even less tolerant than the university system now. but it's a long similar ground that they didn't recognize they didn't give them a job. he was desperate for a job. he didn't want to be an outcast at the top of the mountain speaking to an audience of four. he wanted to be a professor at boston university but he was kicked out. so we should be aware of interpreting a romantic feel that people like the judges wanted to be on their own because it's nice to live out of

his ukase roaming around europe. it's great to be the professor at passerby as long as you can say what you want to say and that is what the job does. >> guest: that is true. i wonder whether institutions have ever embraced thinkers who have sort of dynamited the entire superstructure on which social, political and economical assumptions would be another example. again it gets back to this sort of conflict between individual morality, no institution can never achieve the morality of an individual because finally institution are always heard about the perpetuation of their own survival, whereas an individual is capable of making a choice and sacrificing that. >> guest: there's institutions which better or worse address the needs of the individual acting is what interests me.

we are talking about humanities and how they are not particularly addressing the needs of sudan and that's why people don't want to study. take another institution like the world museum. you often hear it said that nowadays churches -- museum are new churches and cathedrals. what's going on there? people say these new institutions we find the same solemnity, reference and enrichment for your soul as you might've gone to religions for. when i figured that if kind is interesting, good and then i go to the museum and i'm not sure this is all going rate because they think the museum has fallen prey to a method of presenting a part that is to cut off from the lessons of religion. religions used art as a way of helping us to know how to live. it's a reminder of how we should live, an expression of gratitude and a warning for all sorts of ways in which we should not

live. that sounds really odd when compared to what i'd be going on with modern art or whatever. we don't expect that art should have much in tension upon us. that's the modern curatorial system. put objects in a white space, a minimal caption and get the crowd through. but really this is not revolutionary. either the individual or society. it exists in the where the fire appears to writing my book i was trumped by the way in which religions and institutions use ours and far more adventurous provocative ways and it is just one example of how i see lessons that could be pulled out of religion by a nonbeliever and apply to get some things in the modern world to go a little bit better. >> host: yet the renaissance was a restriction placed upon

art with anna shelley and everyone else. >> guest: what was interesting is that kept true to the didactic ambition of religious art and antique roman and greek art. because roman and greek art is exactly like religious art. it wants to guide you to know how to live. >> host: and then ask my roman and greek art. >> guest: the ambition that it should be a guide to life is both in christianity and pagan sort and under it the other idea that the artist is a lone figure that creates work for the aqs is the dominant feeling you get leaving the museum is what that means. this seems like it was translated badly from the germans. you're not quite sure which a response should be yet that is the modernist elite few. art is an ambiguous medium and a more complex work of art, the

harder it will be to say without work of art is about. take a rembrandt painting my cries crossing the sea of galilee. it's a piece of propaganda. it's a very simple piece of propaganda on the part of courage. this was to look at that and remember what courage is. it's very complex and the work of art in terms of its technical formal qualities, but it's very simple at the level of its moral and that's a situation where a hard time excepting in the modern world. how: the he simple morally and really complicated and noble is a work of art? we expect that is not going to be the case. >> host: i'm a secular artist? >> guest: absolutely you see the creators artists have it. ii think the problem with this not the artist, it's a system in which they operate.

take the very didactic impulses. i remember seeing ross goes paintings at the gallery in london as a teenager and wondered what was it was about. i can sense the mood and it's powerful. at the caption that said mark rothko, were named, died in. didn't know it was about. it's a book signing and then years come years later in the interview that said what he tried to do with your? he said about my art to be a place for the sadness, tallness can find a refuge and a focus. i thought wow, that's pretty simple. you could write that i have postcard. do i see that i'm using caption? no, anything but. you find with a lot of artists, what are you doing? trying to stop work, trying to get people to be nice to each other. does that ever stated? no, in other words, the very

symbol of baghdad ambition of the artist has been drained out of it at the curatorial system. so i sent the museum world does to the visible culture with the academic world does too but in culture, which is mainly to rid it of the revolutionary therapeutic data bank. >> guest: i would have to add that religious institutions due to religion. >> guest: -- jalisco i don't notice that this much. i'm more impressed that aspects of of religion which seem only to be possible to collect the vaccine. i defer to you in this area. >> host: and it's also an admiration that i shared that what moves you does not always so much the institution that the

ritual. rituals are designed to create sacred space. they are designed to honor a reality that goes beyond articulation. they are designed in this something i raised the book to put human beings in their place within the cost is. i'm not of course is the power. there is something brilliant about the eucharist and the mouse. just go the eucharist is a communal event. it has an impact on me and herself. in the modern world we imagine that things in your and herself from communion with one book or maybe one artwork. another words, it doesn't touch your soul. what is fascinated by ritual as it is an attempt to say left ear

and devices solely, there are things that you're not going to get to. you're not going to forgive people without yom kippur. you're not going to look at the moon without suki me. they're not going to forgive people without the jewish ritual of plunging yourself or whatever. there are these communal rituals that have to take place otherwise your soul will be in trouble and i'm deeply impressed by this. chiefly because subjectively i know there is so much that i feel i want to do that i don't do because there is no communal structure. and they say yeah, but atheists are going into at inventing things. i feel really great. what is the? there were two parties. it was a parties?

there are secular rituals, but they tend not to be structure properly and psychologically rich. take something like father's day or mother's day, which is a secular ritual, he was antecedent, but it typically ritual. the reason is that fails to recognize the number one thing which is that we don't only love our mothers or fathers. we also hate them. they've let us have been all ways. the relationship between parent and child is conflicted and having a moment which only honors the positive this actually makes the true relationship impossible. the more intelligent ritual would start by saying that is conflicted so we need to reflect that. that is what is clever about the bar mitzvah. it is full of acknowledging the fact that pairing are sad that the kid is coming up.

it's basically saying the kid is. this is a ritual murder of the father as the next generation goes to. so the party and the presence isn't intergenerational. but it's held together and then intelligently. so that's the genius of the ritual. >> host: i pointed this out at the beginning of the book, a fundamental truth about insisted in the same that the greek myths understood psychological truth. that is why ford kept going back to the greek myths and shakespeare. and i think -- and certainly in complete agreement with you but to ask a question, as this literally true is absurd from the beginning because even better list are select italy -- they are select this letter lists. they pick and choose what they

want in a new world contradictions on all sorts of issues. >> guest: and misleading with so much pressure to assume that we as individuals can do all the stuff we need to do just by ourselves. i was stuck reading history of religions that in all religions festival of chaos come a moment when the world is turned upside down and power is reversed and relations have reversed an win in a sense all the craziness, all of our prefers impulses are given route for expression. whether it's kind of old or the feast of fools or in ancient greece the festival of dionysus or whatever. it's a moment in the calendar or the dark misses allowed to come into the light and is regulated. that's what fascinates me, that

is both chaos and structure, the wonderful mixture. in the modern road would be someone up or break a new car, it's very uncoordinated or we have an affair. it's plus up to the individual. it is not seen as some did we all labor with. so the individual comes at the realization that i've got three full impulses violent impulses for a one-two punch my boss. this is seen as a private realization against the backdrop of the semi-optimistic version of an. religion is much kinder to us insane of course this stuff is going to be in view peers who will structure give it a place in the world. >> guest: acknowledges the happy cheerful positive psychology world of modernity is completely denied. >> guest: christian pessimism

in the book of joe but the biggest tax but against because the unmatchable misery of glass bead of human nature. these things are incredibly important to read precisely because we live in a sunny world with the assumption is children are normal creatures rather than have crazy ease and all of us are mature sensible people looking forward to the next vacation rather than people who are torn apart by serious darkness and i love reading christian and other jewish architects precisely because i think all of them are alone here. it's also very dignified the prose or poetry is beautiful so it expresses the most private and articulate size of itself, raises them out of the dark is, places than before as a less loaded with most unacceptable staff that resides in the human

soul. >> guest: there should no longer be a division between what i call art and psychology, the psyche, the division that are served the needs of the soul directly. it did not exist in the art world. it was part of ethics, part of living, whereas we put it seriously in the corner and we almost don't recognize how much we put it in the corner. but it's not in the service of life. >> host: both of us love boost. it gave been asked by to describe. >> guest: but it's not the artist paint artist do a fine job. it's the way it's presented. i read a book on how preuss can change your life and that commie excommunicated from the university of the same. the feeling was this is not a

serious man. if he has written a book on help preuss can change your life we don't want them here. he has written a self-help vote. i was happy to go because we were not seen eye to eye here. it's not symptomatic. it's not preuss. it's the structure. all works of culture should be how it can change your life, how picasso can change your life. that's a method that was lost at our peril. >> host: more importantly that's how we've wrote it. >> guest: absolutely. this is a man looking for the meaning of life and to finding a a quasireligious path to redemption and he, preuss who knew a lot about religion is precisely the following. >> host: you have some specific ideas i want to ask you about travel agents. i don't need to list them upon the restaurants, but maybe you

could spell some of them out. >> guest: one of the things i do in my book is to provoke the reader. what i'm telling you here's not merely merely set of ideas. i'm trying to imagine how they treat the world and change the road with the help of certain concepts that we may be discussing. why do we do that? the practices and area and books are in another. because i'm writing about religion, which are all about the union of practice and eerie it seems exciting and interesting to look at that. so for example in thinking about this and all the major faiths are interested in the feeling of awe. they realize if you put somebody in a space where they see how small a human occupies, how small a human read occupies in the vastness of space or time, there'll be a quite enough of their soul, anxiety, pressure to

succeed an ego driven impulses. that will abate under the night sky come in a cathedral, a grand canyon, wherever it is you will have a certain feeling, spilling of the eco. so i try and dig okay, religions are unparalleled with doing this if they do this all the time and the really great. where do we do this? i try and imagine structuring and astronomy is a vital source of awe. the problem is when you go to a science museum, they will treat you like your scientists. they don't treat you like you looking for all. they treat you like you're about to work for nasa and are seriously interested in that she wanted to galaxy 3 million light-years away. most of us are not. we are looking to science or scientific material as their religious forebears did.

another rights as a source of awe that the modern museum does not love that. so i try to imagine a space in my co-that's a little bit like a planetary a or a science museum with the point would not be to learn about science. it would be to look at scientific phenomena for that feeling of awe and benefits it can bring. i even faithfully imagine the giant screens in times square currently displaying the stock market data and every now and then get live feed from the hubble telescope that describes the earth so as you walk along at my antihuman and tell you look up and see some of these galaxies and nebulae's and suddenly everything would change rather as it changes when you see the towers and spires across the open field in northern france, the same kind of an odd, the same collision of your daily self-assembly in a public. so if anyone is only does screens in times square is

watching, let's put them into the hubble. >> host: you talk about travel, communal restaurant. >> guest: i am interested in the travel business because the dizziness religion plays a fundamental part of spiritual life. that's interesting because we travel as well. so you think what do they do doing what we do? a pilgrimage as many things, but it is an attempt to use a journey to help your soul. what kind of have an impulsive map. we say i'm going to go on a journey to try and do something. but were very unstructured about it. we don't really connect on our inner needs. if you look at the travel pages of newspapers, the dilemma as i was do i find the hotel or get a cheaper rate. the real question of travel is how do i match the outer world

for some evolution and the world. that is what religion -- that's how religion is travel. so i can imagine what a travel agency might be like that is probably studied religion. it's a good suggestion like many of my suggestions. really what you had to ikea pseudo-medieval christianity is the set of priests and discuss the state of your soul on the priesthood tai chi to a destination. you literally have a map or book of destinations around europe and your inner life and outer destination would be matched. funny they are because again is religions understand often that uses getting there undermines the capacity of the journey to affect the change in us. there is a difficulty a metaphor for it and are difficulty so by removing outer difficulties you

undermine willingness to an joy and are difficulty to change. >> host: the other thing is people learn to read having led from a clustered industrial to a replication of that. in fact they don't travel at all really. guess that they don't travel at all. and ambitions if we want serious things from their travel. to improve relationship to discover and understand our world. it is really serious ambitions and yet how often travel goes wrong because the serious ambitions are not taken serious about the travel industry. would could be so easily dissuaded. just go going to club night in

bermuda. i also looked at the area of community that strikes me one of the things that religion are doing is taking strangers together in an extraordinary accomplish beautiful space enters the basic actions basically introduce themselves. the acts like a host at a party will break the ice and allow people to release their humanity and curiosity. so a religious host does that with a group of congregants. we've lost that ability. a modern city like new york or anywhere is full of bars and come up come up with these darker repetitions, not communal spaces. their communities. no one really talks to anyone or only in slightly haphazard ways. we lack any asymptomatic turning the stranger and true friend, which is so-called religions.

the stranger can, and give each a great read. these are wonderful traditions. we spent so much time worrying about restaurants and the quality of the tomatoes they are. it's not as compared to the real ambition of the table. i suggest in my book, let's get some tables. doesn't really matter matter what should be. the point is friendship and community and the ancient provisionally religious idea of breaking bread. postcoital talk about the editor in the book, classical theater. i wonder especially having lived in new york after 9/11 and the whole buildup to the iraq war, the one institution that sought to remind us of the war was not the church which pretty much signed up for the war as an institution, but theater. there were numerous productions, also is a great staff that were

done in theater itself is a sacred quality. in some kind of way almost brings back to life the past, our ancestors. has a communal quality. this wondered which are thought or. >> guest: if i were to criticize theater in relation to religions, some rituals have a limited theater, mass, et cetera. but it does not send lee -- i think it was the society of the spec to go. with they way they called this the goal criticized modern culture for things happening on the stage and all of us stay like this. he compared this with religious premodern society, where there's extrude her stuff going on stage and has an impact on the

audience and you leave transformative energy to transform. and i've been in so many plays, wonderful movie plays with the audience's rat and the audience is ready to go anywhere. we are in ecstasy. we're in a state of ecstasy and we are in the hands of those actors. another curtain comes down to wait by ice cream and had out for taxi and go home and that's it. the whole thing -- can issue the theater that could have transformed the road dissipates. inside the actually more radical theatrical tradition and others who have thought about the theater should not just exist in the playhouse. you should maybe start the playhouse, but the tradition looks very much to religion as an integration of spectacle and public engagement. >> host: and yet in times of

regression, art and theater, two major institutions that stood up for the church in the theater, i think you're right. people do walk out and are so does unexercised because of the culture upon him when everything is strips down. susan sontag went to sarajevo and did waiting for it to go about has the power to speak when all of those false converts are gone. i think oftentimes the inability to hear and see and why now it the narcotic. >> guest: comes back to the idea of how seriously should take take works of art. we don't really want to allow it to transform things. whenever a very powerful work comes along, just the way in

which -- i would want to call it a conspiracy, but there's always the conspiracy to strip it of its truly transformational power. in the films are pleased to come out and think i want to. you know, this piece of work is urged upon me an agenda that is so different from everything around and the problem is by lunchtime the next day you've kind of forgot that and by the next weekend it's gone into sub anew at the theater and that's it. so we don't have follow-through. religions are all about circling. they say st. mary's inside. you need them on sunday, you forget the next day. so we go back to them. modern culture is on the psychic can't take us on high point seriously enough. it undermines itself in search

for the new. it's great because there's new things, but this neglect of repetition rehearsals seriously undermined the capacity of any one work of art to really effect change. >> host: when utah's come as you certainly do with christianity and judaism with this class, to what extent is the theology aimed for the oppressed? i was in a refugee camp in the war in el salvador and they were decorating the cam for the day of the innocent, and i knew the story. i asked one of the refugees by with such an important holiday and they said because on this day jesus became a refugee. jesus had fled before herod came and killed the children. and isolate her the story from the position privilege in some

fundamental level and i could recite it verbatim didn't understand it. and i'm wondering, you know, if you look at the antebellum south, you have two streams of the christian religion. you had the black church and you have the way slaveholding church which used the bible to defend slavery. and i think there is theologian james skull has made a strong argument that in many ways he actually calls the white church and not just the antebellum church. because of the antichrist they talks a lot about lynching as sort of our modern cross. i just wondered as we close at the address that issue of justice, the issue of oppression and to what extent finally religion, you know, religious theological systems may not have been written for people like you. >> there's something immensely important for something that is

written, which is the defense of the vulnerable, the week, the child, the dispossessed and more broadly, the south that exists outside of power, money and status. all religions are at their purest on the side of god. in a way on this side of this data source person. the secular world is a winner society. you know, we live in capitalism. capitalism rewards economic merit and journalists about economic success. this is an immensely punishing ideology that leads to not as at its most extreme because only a fraction of the members of this planet and even the members of the united states can't have her live up to that ideology. under that ideology, a huge portion of the world and american citizens are losers and

that can't be right. and where did the losers go? what ideology as it is led half the population to be defined as a loser? this can't be the right philosophy of what religions are cleverly and intelligently done is to say no, that is the wrong ideology. that what matters is not power, status and the possession of vast parcels, but the inner self, the stuff that a parent would love in a child committee outside of power relationships of a love outside of power relationships, what we left in people is the pure person and that is what doctors in the different forms that is what all religions take him above the powerless, but the child from the list of the person of the mortal self, not power, et cetera it would be that voice desperately. what saddens me this really only

the cease articulately. it used to be put forward by the left. put forward by the left. put forward by the left. positions and failed to capitalize its richest area, which was emotional analysis of what we need by focusing itself as a scientific economic cure and totally shot itself in the foot. a renowned developer this capitalism on the one hand and faith-based organizations on the other. what gives it such strength is the capitalism label so many people losers. i think is the absolute ruler of the world i would say what we need is a non-save-based ideology which recognizes the dignity and humanity of the vulnerable and the weak and the child. >> host: thank you very much. >> guest: thank you so much.

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